Intranet Quorum mail contains information about mail you've received and your response to it. The mail process lets you record the fact that someone contacted your office, whether by letter, e-mail, phone, or other means. A mail record does not necessarily contain a response. Your office may simply want to record (and report on) the fact that you were contacted about a certain issue regardless of whether or not you responded to the correspondent.
If you choose to respond to an incoming correspondence, you can record information about the response and generate the output, which can be a printed letter or an e-mail message. You can also initiate mail that's not in response to an incoming letter or message. In that case there would be no incoming information.
The Mail Record page provides fields for entry of information about the incoming correspondence and the response. Each mail record will have one of five statuses: Approved (the response is ready to be printed, batched, or sent via e-mail); On Hold (the response is on hold and cannot be printed, batched, or sent via e-mail); Denied Approval (approval of this response was denied, and it cannot be printed, batched, or sent via e-mail); Request Approval (the response must be approved before it can be printed, batched or sent via e-mail); and Completed (no more action is required).
An office often uses a standard procedure for logging in mail and responding to mail. This procedure determines who records the incoming correspondence and how it is routed for a response.
There are many ways in which an office may choose to respond to incoming correspondence. The following are procedures that offices may use.
One person logs in the incoming mail, and a second person creates the response. One person records the incoming mail information, creating a new People record if necessary. That person updates the Assigned To field with the name of the person responsible for answering the letter. He saves the information and may create a workflow to route the mail record to the responsible staff member. When that staff member opens the mail record from the My Work area or responds to a Workflow alert, he opens the record containing the correspondence information. He then creates or assigns a letter, and prints the letter, sends the e-mail message, or adds the mail to a batch.
One person logs in and responds to incoming mail. Mail goes directly to the staff member responsible for answering it. He logs it in and creates or assigns a response. If there is already a People record for the correspondent in the database, the staff member creates a new mail record for that person. If there isn't a People record, the staff member creates one by entering the correspondent's name and address information and then attaching a new mail record for the correspondence.
One person logs in and/or responds to incoming mail, and a second person approves the response before it is sent. Mail is logged in and responded to using one of the two previous or another method, but the person assigning the letter does not have the authority to print it in final form, send it as an e-mail message, or place it in a batch. That person would use the offices approval process to route the response to the staff member authorized to approve it. Depending on the procedure established for your office, once the letter is reviewed and approved it might be returned to the author for disposition, sent by the approver, or added to a batch.